4.25 stars!

Sestia was a satisfying conclusion to The Five Queendoms trilogy! It's an epic fantasy that blends court politics, dark magic, and fierce female leadership and explores the costs of power and the balance between life and death. Macallister's world building remains one of my favorite parts, it's wonderful! I absolutely love that the series has been centered on women! The pacing is taut, the stakes high, and the character arcs deeply satisfying, especially as long-simmering conflicts come to a head.

Sestia is the third and final installment in The Five Queendoms Trilogy. You must read both Scorpica and Arca first.

Sestia picks up right where Arca left off. Each queendom is facing the aftermath of both the war and the ending of The Drought of Girls. What I loved about this ending is that we got to catch up with soo many characters from Scorpica who did not appear or were only briefly mentioned in Arca. I appreciate that Macalister took the time to close all of the loops and provide a glimpse into their futures even though we didn't get to actually experience it. Anyone who enjoyed the first two books in the series is sure to consider this a satisfying and happy ending.

I’ve been hooked on G.R. Macallister’s Five Queendoms series from the beginning, but Sestia absolutely blew me away. It’s the culmination of everything I’ve loved about this world: fierce women, intricate political games, deep-rooted magic, and an unflinching look at power and legacy. Macallister doesn’t just build a world—she architects an entire ecosystem of culture, language, and belief, and in Sestia, she brings it all to a brilliant, gut-wrenching, and deeply satisfying crescendo. These books have redefined what epic fantasy can be, and Sestia is the crown jewel.

Thank you to Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, for the free copy to review.

Somehow I was unaware this was the final book in the series and that makes me feel so sad. Definitely was not ready to say goodbye to this series. That being said, as far as final books go this was a good one. I was instantly sucked into the story and rooting for all of my favorite characters. I think the ending was a perfect little bow tied on top. Magnificent series and everyone should check it out!

Such a great conclusion to The Five Queendoms trilogy! Things that were set up in Scorpica come to fruition in Sestia. The threads that Macallister has been weaving since book 1 have created a beautiful tapestry of epic fantasy here. At the start of both Scorpica and Arca I felt that things were so disconnected at the start but came together so well. I never felt that in this book. Things were always so interconnected, showing just how well this world works.

I love how open, queer-normative, and feminist this matriarchal society is and how cutthroat and competitive the rulers are. The main tension as a reader was the underlands plotline, but it resolved way too easily for me. Yet I still enjoyed my time spent in the Underlands and across The Five Queendoms. It was an epic journey worth every second.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Thank you to @sagapressbooks and @netgalley for the eARC. All thoughts are my own.

I received an Advanced Reader Copy from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review. Overall, the Five Queendoms trilogy is well written and the storyline really interesting, with strong worldbuilding and unique characters. I enjoyed this final installment in the Five Queendoms trilogy, which involved more interaction from the afterlife than I expected. The writing quality is very good, and we follow a number of characters we hadn't really spent much time with in the previous two books in the series.

I will admit, the ending sort of sneaks up on you as there's not a lot of clues we've come round to the end of our story. But I imagine finding a place to conclude the Five Queendoms trilogy would have likely been difficult. Overall this trilogy was ingenious in its portrayal of a matriarchal culture and a society so established around the role of women as power brokers, that it is sort of unraveled by the 15 year "Drought of Girls". But I also feel like there could have been some deeper developments around the ways the roles of men could have been changed due to the calamity and how this effected each of the Queendoms individually. I find it a little hard to believe there would have been only a couple of minor male-dominated rebellion efforts, and that the male characters would have remained as "docile" as they seemed throughout the series as a whole.

Another oddity is that there's one of the Queendoms that doesn't really get much engagement in the series, the Bastion. I think there was plenty more story to tell there, as we barely got to know anything about it, and when we leave our characters in Sestia -- there's still a well known scribe being held in the Bastion (which is a thread without a resolution in the novel). I imagine this means there could be further novels, but the thread is sort of just left hanging for the reader after we had spent a lot of time with this scribe in earlier portions of the 2nd & 3rd novels in the series.

Hopefully there will be future installments in the Five Queendoms world, that will deepen our knowledge about this unique place, and perhaps more will be learned about the Bastion.

This series is fairly large in scope, spanning years and countries and POVs. So coming into book three a couple of years after reading the second book had some challenges in itself and I probably should have reread, but I was too eager to see how this saga would wrap up.

And it's a very satisfying wrap-up. There is so much backstory and character development throughout this whole book, I loved it. The whole series is like a complex chessboard (I don't play chess) - pieces fell into place, but there were stakes.

This was a bit of an odd book in the sense that it felt like just a lot of moving pieces and a lot of wrap-up. There wasn't a climax in a traditional sense; I remember when I had less than 50 pages left and wondering how it could possibly go to shit, such as the gates in the underworld, and then resolve in 50 pages. The answer? It doesn't really go to shit. So that was a bit of an odd structural choice, especially for the conclusion of the trilogy, but I loved the politics and the vastness of the story too much to care too much about that.

Overall, a very well-done epic trilogy that I know I'll reread down the road.

Thank you to the publisher, S&S/Saga Press, and to NetGalley for the ARC.

Sestia is the third book in The Five Queendoms series, which release on May 13! It follows (as the name implies) five matriarchies. It gives Game of Thrones-vibes but swap all the men in power with women. I read it while on a trip to Las Vegas, and the palm trees matched the book perfectly. 🌴

This series has been such an enjoyable one for me, but don't go into it expecting a romantasy. It is an epic fantasy with romance, politics, traditions, betrayal, mysteries, gods, and intrigue.

We get to follow multiple characters as their storylines weave together, including old friends from first two books as well as a few new ones. There's not necessarily one central conflict, but many different conflicts and complex choices that each character needs to make.

It was really satisfying to see the growth of characters in the story after following them for three books. I love how each character has flaws and strengths, and they are required to make difficult choices where there's no clear right or wrong. One of my favorite lines from this book: "Any story could have a happy ending depending on where you decided to end it."

**Slight spoilers for the first two books below**
I wasn't sure how I would feel about the Underlands storyline. I will admit, they were my least favorite chapters in this book, but I enjoyed them a lot more than I thought I would. One part of the ending of this plotline I absolutely loved, while the other I was kind of mad about. 😆 But that is a very minor critique in a series I really loved.

I was obsessed with the first two books in this series but then it kind of fell off in the third installment. It felt like I was reading an encyclopedia and it was just a monotonous historical story. It also got pretty hard to keep up with all the characters since there is like 30 at this point. I was not able to finish.

First two books were chef’s kiss - this one I was just expecting more since it is the finale. Not a terrible read, but just not a lot of UMFH

An absolutely intense and incredible third installment that is so hard to put down even when your e-reader is low on power. I hope one of the streaming channels picks this up as a series! And I can’t wait for the next book! I want more now!

I didn’t realize this was only going to be a trilogy, for some reason I thought 5 queendoms, 5 book. Silly me. This was a good ending to the trilogy. I greatly loved the characters who stepped up and how everything finished. It flowed well with the previous two books and I felt myself more connected with some of the characters in this book than the other two.

The pacing was well, the story was intricate. It was well done.

Thank you NetGalley and thank you to the publisher for the chance to read this earc.

After loving the first two books, I was excited to get the third and last book in this trilogy. Now that the girl drought has ended, things begin to happen that change how life was looked at. The Underworlds play a big role in this story and Sessadon, the deceased sorcerer, has some nepharous plans that help add tension to the plot. All of the lands in the Queendom and their peoples emerge in this story as a fragile peace begin. There are a lot of characters in this story and there is a list of characters at the beginning that help make sense of it all until you learn about each character within the story. I liked that some of my favorite characters in the other books made appearances here, such as Fasiq, the giant. As the last book in trilogy, the author does a nice job tying up loose ends and provides some closure to storylines.
The author does a fantastic job of describing this fictitious lands and royal houses. I could picture the walls, rooms, and Underworld which is so important in a fantasy book. The characters were well developed with some you love and some you love to hate.
If you are looking for an immersive fantasy series, I highly recommend Scorpica, Arca, and now Sestia!
#Sestia
Thank you Saga Press and Net Galley for a complimentary copy. All opinions expressed are my own.